For a moment, amid the furious screams and piercing roars around him, Kyle knelt in silence. He closed his eyes as the wounds on his body knit together. Then, with a soft click of his tongue, he muttered to himself.
"Only two days... and you have pushed me this far. Hah. Is it because you consumed the Celestial Symbol Nathaniel carried?"
The instant he regained a bit of clarity, he rose to his feet, his hand falling down from the healing wound on his chest as his gaze swept across the scene, lingering on each of the five bodies ensnared in the symbols.
"Let’s end this."
His voice was steady as he vanished and reappeared before the nearest struggling and screaming figure, silently locking eyes with the bloodshot, crazed obsidian gaze.
This time, Kyle did not reach for the soul fragment within the body. Instead, he just watched as the countless golden symbols shackling the body obeyed his command, slipped into the body forcefully, pulled out the soul fragment, and presented it to him.
Wrapping his fingers around the fragment, Kyle sealed it within the crystal. The body before him stiffened and hunched lifelessly. A cold aura radiated from Kyle, enveloping it as it disintegrated into snowflakes. Kyle then turned his attention to the next body.
The remaining four pairs of crazed, dark eyes glaring at him began to bleed as Kyle arrived before another of Azazeal’s bodies.
His gaze remained indifferent as the array moved once again at his command, golden symbols surging forward to quickly burrow into the seized, struggling body, extracting the soul fragment with ruthless precision.
All around them, the dark expanse pulsed with brilliant golden light, an intricate web of symbols stretching endlessly—powerful enough to cover the entire Celestial realm.
Within that suffocating radiance, where even space seemed to crumble, only Kyle—the one who had created such a powerful array, fueled by the power of his soul and Celestial bloodline—stood unscathed.
He knew he would pay a heavy price once the array—containing every symbol he had ever mastered, woven together into a web powerful enough to bind even a Celestial who had reached the End—was activated.
Yet he had not hesitated for a moment to activate it, the moment he realized it had assumed the perfect shape he required.
The heavy price be damned.
Anyway, what was the worst that could happen? He might grow weak. So what? It was true—he had always pursued power. But he was not Nathaniel, who sacrificed his morals for power. If he had fought his way to this level on his own, endured every trial, then who said he couldn’t do it again?
Ultimately, he had come this far for one goal: to stop Azazeal from going back, to prevent him from fulfilling his promise of destroying the Universe they came from.
And now, at last, he was on the verge of completing that goal. Yet, as the symbols dragged out the soul fragments from the bodies around him, a fleeting shadow of emotion crossed his indifferent eyes.
Just now, he realized he had forgotten to include everything—how could he overlook that his pursuit of Azazeal had also been fueled by revenge—for all the humiliation and torment he had endured at his hands?
Why? He didn’t really know. Perhaps, after coming so far, he just wanted to stop this man who had lost himself so completely.
Not out of pity. Truly. But from the same unyielding resolve that had always given him strength and had carried him this far.
In the end, only one of Azazeal’s bodies remained—quiet and no longer struggling.
The bloodshot eyes fixed on him, silent, as if daring him to act. Around Azazeal’s body, the darkness writhed and churned, restless, as if it wanted to forsake him and escape.
Kyle didn’t hesitate.
This time, he reached out his hand to pull out the last soul fragment within Azazeal’s body. Yet, the instant his fingers drew near, the corners of the bloodshot eyes staring at him curved upward. This made Kyle freeze for a heartbeat. Before he could react, the body before him actually self-destructed.
The next instant, a deafening explosion ripped through the space. It happened so abruptly, so unexpectedly, that, being the closest, Kyle failed to defend himself. The crystal holding the six soul fragments he had painstakingly collected cracked and shattered under the force. The blast tore through him, obliterating his body.
As Kyle’s consciousness blurred and lost concentration, the massive array shattered, scattering into countless golden particles—like fireflies drifting aimlessly in the void.
From the convergence of the seven soul fragments, a dense, pitch-black mass of darkness erupted, swallowing the fireflies alongside the ethereal silver soul that had escaped when Kyle’s body was destroyed.
In their battle, not a single idle word was exchanged. Even as Kyle teetered on the edge of ending it all, he and Azazeal didn’t speak—for when the truly powerful clash, there is no place for meaningless chatter.
But now, as the darkness engulfed the ethereal silver soul, Kyle finally became aware of the hundreds of faint whispers screaming around him, a cacophony of voices twisting and writhing in the void.
The first words he caught were chilling:
Azazeal asking to the darkness to devour his soul, to go and do whatever it wanted—so everything, all of it, could end with him.
Kyle’s soul trembled as he shouted. No sound escaped him, for he had lost his body. Yet he was desperate as he fought the darkness trying to consume him.
Suddenly, an unfamiliar laughter echoed through the dark, filled with glee as Kyle’s soul was assailed, as if something—other than Azazeal—was watching them both endure an agony far worse than death.
Amid it all, as the seven soul fragments around him began to slowly disintegrate, countless memories buried deep within them brushed past him. And he saw—he witnessed every single thing Azazeal had gone through so far. It was as if he were reliving each of those moments himself.